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Severus the Unicorn had lived in joyful fun with his fellow magical brethren for the long entirety of his charmed life, until the day that the atmosphere, chocked full of smog generated far away, wrapped the ice sheets of the planet like a warm blanket and melted them, raising the oceans and threatening his friends and ancestral homeland with inundation.

“Oh Severus,” cried the other unicorns, “You who have been bravest and most leaderlike in our leaderless society, will you save us all from climate change and ruin?”

Severus stood stately on a rocky stage. “You have given me your sacred trust, and I shall not disappoint you,” he said, and then he left his world in a catamaran to bring sense and environmental stewardship to the humans.

His strategy was twofold. First and foremost, he turned his conically-augmented brain to the problem of cold fusion, and in eighteen months created an inexpensive fusion reactor that would run off of lightly filtered seawater. Secondly, he ran for political office, exploiting a growing rift in the electorate between experts and the people. He ran as an outsider, a nationalist and a business-lover, but as soon as the votes were tallied and he became the first equine president of the United States he sloughed all that off to focus solely on carbon taxation and investments in solar.

The glaciers began to grow. Polar bears went back to murdering everything that wandered the arctic. The oceans pulled back from Florida, and just as soon as his first term in office was completed, Severus once again boarded his catamaran, bound for the magical lands where joy ruled all and leaders were not needed.

He was sorely homesick.

Written on 4/8/17 at the University of Rochester’s ArtAwake Festival for a woman who had strange taste in names.